


the fire in the sound

by pomelo (rootcellars)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: 100 Year War (Avatar TV), Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Childhood Friends, Firebending & Firebenders, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rootcellars/pseuds/pomelo
Summary: It’s undeniable when Jeonghan really forces himself to think about it that Seungcheol deserves the whole world, deserves someone who will give him the sky and set him free. Jeonghan is a measly replacement for that person, as it would be. All he can offer is a promise to keep Seungcheol’s secrets.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 24
Kudos: 61
Collections: Director's Cut Fest





	the fire in the sound

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by avatar: the last airbender, written for [director's cut fest](https://twitter.com/directcutfest).
> 
> kaia's beautiful posting graphics singlehandedly motivated me to churn out this 7k fic in 2 days

“Drinks tonight on Jeonghan!” Junhui screams to what feels like the entire tavern cheering. His hand pulls Jeonghan’s into the air, locking Jeonghan into a drunken headlock. Jeonghan’s brain is a little fuzzy from the cheongju, but he still watches the drink in Junhui’s other hand slosh precariously in its cup, as if in slow motion.

Jeonghan sees Chan’s hand shoot up eagerly out of the corner of his eye, and extricates himself just in time to level the boy with a glare. “Don’t even think about it,” he tells him, as the pretty bartender approaches. She stops between them, frowning at Chan, and Jeonghan cuts in. “He’s barely old enough to drink, Minkyung-ssi. But let’s give him a cup of makgeolli and then see where he’s at.”

Under the table, Chan is kicking him in the shin. But Jeonghan keeps his face stretched into his most charming smile, until Minkyung rolls her eyes and turns to the next customer.

“You never let me drink,” whines Chan, after Minkyung is out of earshot. “I literally faced the Fire Nation in battle and you still won’t let me have the good liquor.”

“You can drink whatever you like, Channie. Just not on my coin.” Jeonghan leans back, takes another swig of his cheongju, and appraises Chan’s pout. Chan came back from the war with baby fat still on his cheeks, his trademark grin still tugging at the edges of his mouth. But sometimes Jeonghan catches the flinty set of his eyes, or the thin line that occasionally furrows his brow.

Nothing happened to Chan during the war, of course, not under Junhui’s command. If anything had, Jeonghan would have personally killed them both. But the “nothing” of a lucky stint in the army still means knowing the senseless destruction of the battlefield, the razed forests and the smell of burning flesh. Jeonghan never went to war, but he’s certainly no stranger to loss. Without a moment’s hesitation he would count himself one of the lucky ones, too.

Jeonghan softens, looking at Chan like that. After all this time, of course, he’s still Jeonghan’s baby.

“What are you looking at,” says Chan as the makgeolli arrives, though the irritation is fond.

“You can get yourself smashed on baijiu next week when it’s Minghao’s turn to treat,” says Jeonghan, smirking. “I know for a fact that he’s rolling in it.”

-

They must have been terribly young, if Jeonghan can’t remember the first time they met. It feels like it’s always been the two of them, Jeonghan and Seungcheol, even when nothing else in the world has been certain. They’ve only been settled here in Gwaseong for two years now, but it’s long enough for the place to feel a little less like a refugee colony and a little more like a village coming into its own. Long enough for Seungcheol to celebrate his twelfth birthday, though Jeonghan’s won’t be here for another month.

Jeonghan’s hand finds Seungcheol’s under the desk in the makeshift classroom. It’s hot and a little sticky, like the air outside, but Jeonghan doesn’t mind. He needs something to keep himself awake. The ahjumma with the short hair is teaching today, and Jeonghan always passes out so fast whenever she lectures that he’s never bothered to remember her name.

Seungcheol is rapt, though, his eyes trained on the teacher, and Jeonghan knows that the military history of the Earth Kingdom comes alive for Seungcheol in a way it never will for him. Jeonghan can’t for his life understand what the ahjumma is talking about now, but he watches Seungcheol’s eyes widen, his brow furrow and smooth out, his pink mouth fall a little open in surprise. War doesn’t interest Jeonghan, not when there’s other things he’d rather be thinking about.

Jeonghan squeezes Seungcheol’s hand, once for comfort, twice to be annoying, and then when there’s no response, squeezes it again, hard, until he can feel the joints crack under his grip.

“Hani,” says Seungcheol, finally looking at him, and Jeonghan grins.

Later, Jeonghan squints as Seungcheol drags him into the late afternoon sun, still groggy from his nap. They lean together in the shade of a big, twisted banyan, and Seungcheol stretches out both hands, one resting on Jeonghan’s lap, one on his own.

“You want me to read for you?” asks Jeonghan. He picks up one of Seungcheol’s palms, and leans in to peer at it with his most practiced fortune-telling frown until he feels something cold press against his cheek. “Why is your shirt soaked through here?”

“Because you drooled on me for all but like ten minutes of class today,” says Seungcheol, sounding mildly accusing.

“Oh.” Jeonghan looks back at the palm. “Well, you let me drool on you for that whole time. It’s not like I was awake enough to know otherwise.”

Seungcheol just shrugs and looks away, like he can’t argue with that. In Jeonghan’s hands, Seungcheol’s palm is big and soft. With a finger Jeonghan traces the life line – or what he thinks is the life line, the one on the bottom? The creases in Seungcheol’s palms have always been well-defined, his hands just the right kind of chubby to hold. There are calluses on his fingers, probably from working on the farm, and an especially dark one grazes the heel of his hand. When Jeonghan brushes his fingers across the mark, Seungcheol winces.

“Oh, sorry. Is that a burn?” Jeonghan peers closer. “Why do you have a burn?”

“Are you going to sit and ask me questions all day,” Seungcheol asks, “or are you going to read my fortune?”

Jeonghan sniffs. It’s a stupid trick, but one he’s been doing for as long as he remembers, and it gets him clout with the other kids. He thinks about the look on Seungcheol’s face in class as the teacher droned on about heaven knows what. Well, war – that much he knows. A hundred years of war and no one knows when it’s going to end.

“Um,” he says, tracing Seungcheol’s life line, “there will be great war in your lifetime.”

“Very funny, smartass,” says Seungcheol.

“No, like – your own life. You’ll be there. You’ll see it happen.” Jeonghan can’t miss the way that Seungcheol visibly perks up next to him, his back a little straighter.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Jeonghan touches the burn, just barely, and thinks about what else Seungcheol might like to hear. “There’ll be fire. It’ll be all over the battlefield, like they’ll have you cornered ten to one, but you’re going to walk in –”

“Walk? You don’t think I’ll be on an ostrich horse?” Seungcheol frowns. “I feel like I could make cavalry if I tried.”

“The spirits don’t tell me everything, stupid,” says Jeonghan, slapping his hand lightly. A frown wants to crease his brow, but he keeps his face placid. Jeonghan is only eleven, and he doesn’t pay attention in class like Seungcheol does, but he certainly knows how to pay attention where it matters. And he knows that the state of the Earth Kingdom armies are nothing like they were seventy years ago, even twenty. Jeonghan doesn’t know how far they’ve gotten in class, but no one has told Seungcheol yet that they’re losing the war, that refugee boys from the borderlands don’t get sent onto the battlefield to do anything but buy time.

But Seungcheol on horseback, he can see it too, and he’d be lying if he said his heart wasn’t racing just a little bit faster at the thought.

“Well, maybe there is an ostrich horse,” Jeonghan concedes, and this seems to placate Seungcheol enough. “Anyway. I don’t know the details. You do something on the battlefield that turns the tide and takes the Fire Nation’s general out, and when you come home, you’ll be a war hero, and,” he frowns, trying to conjure up the most luxurious memory he knows, “we’ll celebrate with a feast. Three whole roast goats and all of Gwaseong.”

“Wow.” Seungcheol tips his head back against the trunk of the banyan, looking out into the distance. Jeonghan can almost see Seungcheol dreaming behind his eyelids, fantasies of glory and riding in on horseback and taking out a whole Fire Nation battalion, and something lurches in his own chest in response. Jeonghan tightens his grip on Seungcheol’s hand. He doesn’t know why, but it suddenly feels as if he’s clinging on for dear life.

-

“And that’s how I got this bad boy!” Junhui finishes with a flourish, whipping the knife out of its holster and slamming it down on the bar counter. The other tavern-goers ooh and ahh at its mirror-clear polish and the Fire Nation insignia etched into its handle. Jeonghan frowns into his drink. Is Junhui sober enough to be waving a knife around? He turns to find Chan, but Chan is up there with the rest of them, tracing his finger over the crisp 火帝 burned into the metal.

Junhui picks the knife back up and tosses it into the air, catches the blade between his fingertips. No, he’s definitely not sober, thinks Jeonghan, but at least his reflexes are just as sharp even if his goofy grin says that he’s well into his cups. “Anyone else got any good stories?” His eyes roam over the patrons sitting at the bar. “Wonwoo? Nayoung? Jeonghan? Chan?”

“Junhui, you’d know all about the antics Chan got up to during the war, huh,” says Jeonghan, because he can’t help but take up an opportunity to tease. “There are things he still won’t tell me! Me! The man who raised him from birth!”

“We both moved to Myungju at the same time,” Chan deadpans, clapping a hand over Jeonghan’s mouth as Junhui perks up, “and I was sixteen. Hardly an infant.”

Jeonghan licks Chan’s hand until he’s forced to pull away in disgust. “Junnie,” Jeonghan begs, with his best puppy-dog eyes. He can practically hear Chan rolling his eyes next to him.

“You know,” says Junhui, looking like he’s just emerged from deep contemplation, albeit with that dumb smile still plastered on his face. “There’s this funny story. We were camped out at the base of the Langshu mountains, doing recon. And Chan, he kept sneaking out after dinner and coming back a little too late. I was like, what is that boy doing? I’ve known him all my life, surely I couldn’t have grown up with a traitor? So one day I followed him, out to the edge of the forest, and –”

“Oh,” says Jeonghan, excited now. “I know where this is going. Is this about a girl? It’s about a girl, isn’t it?”

“No,” says Chan flatly, face flushed a deep, solid pink, and Jeonghan notes with delight that Minkyung is back with another round of drinks and Chan is very intently avoiding her gaze. “I’m a traitor to the kingdom and I was selling our secrets to the enemy.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about your girlfriend!” squeals Jeonghan as loud as he can get away with, throwing his arms around Chan. “Maybe it’s true what they say, that war makes men out of boys.”

“I guess that would explain why you still have the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old,” Chan mutters. Jeonghan pretends not to hear.

-

They’re both fourteen when Seungcheol takes him out to a field in the middle of the winter, their feet crunching in the frozen dirt. As they walk Jeonghan thinks about his bed at home, the body heat he’s losing now that he’ll never be able to get back, and not for the first time he curses his sense of self-preservation for stopping short at all things Seungcheol. Grumbling, Jeonghan grabs Seungcheol’s arm and slings it over his own shoulders as if it’s a cloak, the warmest, cuddliest human cloak he’s ever known.

Seungcheol is always warm, even in the early morning chill, even when Jeonghan can feel his own eyes watering in the cold. But today he’s shaking.

“Are you cold?” says Jeonghan, frowning. “You’re never cold.” He feels at Seungcheol’s palms, then his forehead. “Are you sick?”

Jeonghan has half a mind to start nagging about how they shouldn’t be outside in the first place, doubly so if Seungcheol is feeling feverish, but the look on Seungcheol’s face silences him. His brows are drawn together, and he won’t meet Jeonghan’s eyes.

“No,” says Seungcheol, but he doesn’t elaborate. “Just, I need to show you something.”

They’ve reached the edge of a clearing in the woods, and Jeonghan is the tiniest bit out of breath, exhaling in translucent white puffs that he watches fade into the white of the air, the white of the landscape around them. Seungcheol pulls him down into a squat and he follows.

“Okay. Show me then.” Jeonghan looks around at the frosted landscape, wincing when the drip of a melting icicle splashes on his nape. Immediately he feels Seungcheol’s hand there, hot on the back of his neck, wiping away the water and replacing it with warmth.

“You can’t tell anyone,” says Seungcheol in a low, quiet tone, and when Jeonghan looks down it takes him a moment to realize what’s going on. First he only sees the patch of grass in front of them thawing ever so slightly, the hoar melting away to a much deeper green. Then it yellows, turns crisp and brown. Next to him, Seungcheol’s brow is furrowed in concentration, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. Jeonghan smells smoke in the air, and before he turns back to the ground he already knows what he’ll see – a lick of red flame dancing across the stripe of grass.

“You’re a firebender,” he says, and Seungcheol lets out a shaky exhale, and the fire gutters out sharply with a pop. “How long have you known?”

“A few months now,” says Seungcheol, and looks away. It explains a lot, Jeonghan thinks – the growing evasiveness, the occasional echo of smoke on his clothes, the dark patches on his hands that must be fading burn scars. Seungcheol finally looks him in the eye, and asks, “are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad,” says Jeonghan, grabbing for Seungcheol’s hands. They’re the same hands he’s always known, chubby with their well-defined creases, though they’re more calloused now. “Were you hiding it from me?”

“Kind of,” says Seungcheol. “The first time it happened, it was a pile of dry leaves, and I wasn’t even thinking about it.” He inhales, exhales, and Jeonghan feels the heat of his hands throb ever so slightly. It sends a thrill down his back. “I nearly couldn’t control it. I was worried I was going to burn the forest down.”

“Well, it’s good that you didn’t.” Jeonghan keeps his tone light, but he knows what’s on both of their minds. Gwaseong is big enough now that Fire Nation soldiers patrol the streets every night at curfew. After the last great migration when they were both nine, Jeonghan had thought that there wasn’t a single bender left in their colony. Spirits forbid any soldier ever find out what Seungcheol’s hands could do. “Does your mother know?”

“I don’t want to ask,” says Seungcheol. “Whatever the reason for this is,” and he shakes his hands out over the snow as if the ability were something he could cast out of his body, “I don’t think I want to know.”

“It might not be bad,” says Jeonghan. “You know what they say, long ago the four nations lived in harmony. We weren’t always at war. People have always lived in the borderlands. Sometimes these things skip generations.”

“Well, it’s certainly not something I can go around showing off. I refuse to let my mom be the talk of the town like that.”

After a while, Jeonghan speaks again. “Of course I’m not mad. Thank you for telling me.” He clutches at Seungcheol’s arm, leans his head into the crook of his neck.

There are so many things that go unsaid between them: How Seungcheol must have practiced by himself in the forest all those days, figuring out how to control the fire at his fingertips until he could whittle his focus down to a single patch of grass. How it took all of his concentration to raise a flame that gentle, so he could show Jeonghan without scaring him, convince Jeonghan that he would never hurt him. How this means that Seungcheol will probably never be able to join the King’s army, made a fugitive of his dreams by this newfound inheritance.

Jeonghan hopes that Seungcheol gets it too, gets it without him having to fit his feelings into words. Selfishly, he’s a little pleased at the thought that Seungcheol will probably have to stay here with him in their little backwater colony, though he can always feel Seungcheol chafing at the bit. But it’s undeniable when Jeonghan really forces himself to think about it that Seungcheol deserves the whole world, deserves someone who will give him the sky and set him free. Jeonghan is a measly replacement for that person, as it would be. All he can offer is a promise to keep Seungcheol’s secrets.

He hopes Seungcheol knows that, as he relishes the warmth of his neck against his own cheek. I can’t give you what you deserve. But for now I’ll give you all I have.

In the corner of his vision, Seungcheol’s eyes are dangerously soft. Jeonghan’s heart swells with something he can’t name. So of course he opens his mouth and whines, “Not all of us are walking furnaces, Seungcheol. Come on, take me home.”

And of course, Seungcheol does.

-

Jeonghan has thus far managed to evade being the target of the night’s drunken gossip, though he can’t forget, as he takes another swig of his own drink, that he’ll be the one footing the bill for everyone’s revelry tonight. He curses Wonwoo for the bet that got him here in the first place, which he’d really done as a huge favor for the kid, all things considered. Admittedly, Jeonghan hadn’t thought Wonwoo would get his act together so quickly with regard to Soonyoung. He may have lost the bet, but takes some meager consolation in how flustered Wonwoo is getting now, five drinks in, being questioned about his new Fire Nation lover.

“Sleeping with the enemy now, are we?” asks Nayoung coolly, though a sly smile tugs at her mouth.

“If you must know,” says Wonwoo, his glasses slipping half an inch down his reddening nose. “He deserted. Perfectly honorable, in the great moral scheme of things.”

“You know Wonwoo,” explains Jeonghan with glee to anyone in earshot, “if he didn’t have the ethics all sorted out in his head he wouldn’t even be able to get it up.”

“You’re nasty,” Wonwoo tells him with a scowl, as if he doesn’t have Jeonghan to thank for his vastly improved mood now that he’s being sexed up on a regular basis. “Anyway, Soonyoung is sorting out some matters at his family home, since he finished his assignment covering Zuko’s war crimes tribunal early. He sent me a hawk to say he’ll be back in a few days, so maybe I’ll bring him next week.”

“Oh, good.” Jeonghan thinks about Minghao’s deep pockets. “The more the merrier. Tell him to bring all his friends.”

“Is it weird to be with a firebender?” asks Junhui, slotting himself in between Nayoung and Chan. “Like what does your family think?”

Wonwoo shrugs. “Soonyoung’s been living here for years now, so people don’t know unless I bring it up.”

Unbidden, memories of Seungcheol rise to Jeonghan’s mind. He’d been Earth Kingdom to the core, steadfast and ebullient and kind. But the fire had always been a part of him too, even when he’d fought so hard to keep it inside. Jeonghan thinks about his warm hands, that radiant grin. Not for the first time or the last, Jeonghan wonders where he is now. Wonders if things would have been any different, any more possible had they stayed in Gwaseong together, with its stifling summers and its brackish streams and Fire Nation soldiers breathing down their backs at every turn.

Well, not anymore, he supposes. He hasn’t been back to Gwaseong since he left, even though the war has been over for two years now. There’s just nothing for him to go back to.

Nayoung catches his eye, and slides her cup of baekseju over to him. “Care to share with the class?”

Jeonghan shrugs, keeping his voice light. “I grew up with a firebender, actually.” He hasn’t said it out loud in three years. But things are different now, and Seungcheol isn’t coming back.

He takes a sip from Nayoung’s drink as Junhui and Wonwoo both look up in surprise. The heady scent of ginseng cuts through the taste of alcohol, encourages Jeonghan to throw caution to the wind. “You could even say I loved him.”

-

Jeonghan makes his typical rounds in what’s become Gwaseong’s little semblance of a town square. It’s a routine for him now: He gets paid a pittance to deliver packages and keep the messenger hawks in order, and he spends his mornings lingering – at people’s doorsteps, in the aisles of the general store, if he’s feeling bold even outside the Fire Nation barracks. Sometimes he gets asked for a palm reading, and in that case he considers himself extra lucky. More often than not he manages to charm some prize gossip out of one townsperson or another.

It’s a useful skill to have. Jeonghan has always been in the business of keeping secrets, and as he heads out into the forest for the afternoon he feels dragged down by their combined weight: The ahjumma who used to teach the village kids history got a mysterious letter in the mail, and since then she’s been too afraid to leave her house. Zhong xiansheng hasn’t been seen in a month, and people think that it’s foul play. Junghyun and Solhee tried to run away last week, but the soldiers caught them before they could even get a mile outside Gwaseong’s boundaries. What else is new? Seungcheol is a firebender, Jeonghan is in love with his best friend, and if the rumors are really true – which he’s pretty sure they are – the Avatar has returned.

It’s an open secret by now, really, almost a fact of life. The sky is blue and Jeonghan is nineteen and the Avatar is out there. Nobody knows what he looks like, only that somehow he’s decided to come out from under his rock after a hundred years and give the world what is very likely a fresh breath of false hope.

Of course Seungcheol had practically shouted when he’d heard the news, though he’d clapped a hand over his mouth in time to muffle the sound. When Jeonghan had seen the delight in his eyes, he’d immediately felt guilty for not telling Seungcheol first. Now as he treks into the forest clearing to see Seungcheol aiming swift, quiet fireballs into the air in front of him, he thinks again that he was right to hold off. It nearly hurts to see the determination in Seungcheol’s brow, the sweat beading at his temple. Jeonghan remembers the intensity of Seungcheol’s concentration the first time he had shown Jeonghan his firebending. Jeonghan knows that resolute devotion so well, and he can’t help but wish he was its sole recipient for once.

“Hey,” says Seungcheol in acknowledgment, mopping off his brow. Jeonghan smiles at him. Seungcheol is slipping away from him, always has been.

“It looks really good,” Jeonghan says. “The bending.” Whatever Seungcheol lacks in proper firebending technique he certainly makes up for in control. The little patch of grass he had so carefully burned five years ago has long since grown over, but the fireballs that he now launches dissipate seconds before impact, their flame vanishing before they can leave any mark of their existence. Even sniffing the air, Jeonghan thinks he’s only imagining the smell of smoke.

“Jeonghan,” says Seungcheol coming closer. He takes Jeonghan’s hands in his, warm as ever, fingers still a little chubby. “I’m going to join the Avatar.”

Jeonghan closes his eyes. He’s seen this coming for a long time now. Since the first he’d heard of the Avatar, he’d known that he could only do so much to delay the inevitable.

“I may not be able to join the King’s army,” Seungcheol is saying, “but I can find the Avatar, and I can help him. Maybe he’ll even have a firebending teacher by then. I could be useful. The Avatar needs firebenders on his side.”

“Okay.” Jeonghan’s voice shakes only a little.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

In Seungcheol’s eyes there’s a question, but Jeonghan can’t meet him there. He can’t do this. “Do you want to go?” he asks, looking resolutely at Seungcheol’s nose, then his lips, anywhere but his eyes. “Do you really want to risk it all, when the war could go on for another hundred years? Or is it just something you feel like you have to do?”

“Does it really matter?” says Seungcheol. “I have to, I’ve always known that. And by the time I get to the battlefield I hope I’ll want to, too.”

“I wish you would just stay here with me,” blurts Jeonghan.

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment. Then, “Do you really mean that?”

Jeonghan looks away. Suddenly it’s all too much to bear: He wonders what it had been like for his parents, his grandparents and his great-grandparents even, to fall in love with war raging around them. If they had felt so thoroughly torn apart for daring to dream of happiness while the world was crumbling. But none of them had loved a boy quite like Seungcheol, with his furrowed brow and his dreams of war, his sense of duty and the intensity of his gaze – and fire pulsing through his veins. And in his wake Jeonghan, always following, always pulled into his orbit. 

“No,” says Jeonghan, and it washes over him, the stickiness of resignation. “I guess I don’t.”

“Okay,” says Seungcheol, and he pulls Jeonghan into a hug. “Okay.”

Tears are threatening to escape from Jeonghan’s eyes. He does his best to blink them back, glad that Seungcheol’s face is pressed into his shoulder. He tries to sear this moment into his memory, Seungcheol’s arms encircling him like a safety blanket, his breath hot against his neck. The solidness of this boy in his arms.

“I’m afraid you’ll never come back,” says Jeonghan, once they break apart.

“Oh, I will,” says Seungcheol, and he has the audacity to smile. “You should know better than anyone. I’ll return a war hero and we’ll feast on goat for three days. Or was it three goats and one day?”

Now Jeonghan really is crying. “You know that was fake, right? The palm readings? I can’t tell fortunes. I can’t tell anything at all.”

Seungcheol touches his cheek softly, so softly, and Jeonghan feels the tears dry on his skin. “I know, Jeonghan. I’ve always known. But hearing you say it made it feel real, you know? All I need is your faith. That’s all I’ve ever needed.”

Jeonghan hates that he can’t even give him that.

-

“He was a kid I grew up with,” explains Jeonghan. “We were a bunch of refugees, Earth Kingdom folk from all across the borderlands, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know him. We didn’t find anywhere to settle down until I was nine. And I don’t think he even knew he could bend until… years later.” Jeonghan is a bit too drunk to do the math, even though the memories of every summer’s passing are crystal clear in his mind. When it comes down to it, his life is really only divided in two: the first nineteen years of Seungcheol, and the rest of his life after.

“What happened to him?” asks Wonwoo.

“He left to go fight with Avatar Aang,” says Jeonghan, and at the mention of Aang’s name there are whoops from the crowd. He looks up and realizes he’s been talking quite a bit louder than he had thought, and now about half the tavern is looking at him. Well, damn. He swirls Nayoung’s baekseju around in its cup and takes another sip. “He left, and I didn’t really have anything to stay for anymore either, so I left too.” Shrugs. “Came to Myungju as soon as I could slip out from under the soldiers. Haven’t heard from him since.”

“Sounds like you really loved him,” says Nayoung.

Jeonghan finishes the drink. He’s already far enough gone to be spilling his heart to a bunch of strangers, and he’s paying for it all at the end of the night anyway, so he might as well enjoy the wine. “He was my best friend,” he says. Seungcheol could be anywhere in the world right now, could be six feet in the ground or traveling the world with the legendary Avatar, and Jeonghan wouldn’t know either way. Jeonghan wouldn’t know but he still wants to, after all this time. “I couldn’t help but love him. Spirits know I still do.”

-

Myungju is for the most part a pretty and clean city, if you can ignore the perpetual plumes of black smoke billowing from the Fire Nation warships permanently docked in its port. Jeonghan has really never been in a city before, but he’s doing pretty well adjusting for a lifelong country bumpkin, if he does say so himself. He hadn’t had very much to begin with coming from Gwaseong, but at least he was able to call in enough favors to get himself safely out of town. Gossip, he’s learned, certainly pays off.

And now he’s here, without Seungcheol for the first time in his life, living in a grimy little room above the print shop. Jeonghan flops over on the pitiful mattress that passes for a bed. Life could certainly be much worse. The sky outside is violet, fading quickly to black, and footsteps echo in the hallway outside, followed by a knock on his door and Wonwoo’s voice. “Dinner is ready in the kitchen, if you want it.”

“Oh,” Jeonghan calls in response. “Thanks. I’ll be out soon.”

This is a lie, and they both know it. Every night Jeonghan tries to pull himself out of bed to share a meal with Nayoung and Wonwoo, the other two workers who keep the paper running, and every night he talks himself out of it and falls back asleep thinking of Seungcheol. Where he is, whether he’s found the Avatar by now, whether he’s made any new friends along the way. Have faith, he reminds himself, all Seungcheol needs is your faith. Jeonghan has always had the gift of seeing a little too clearly. But now maybe he needs to close his eyes, and just believe.

He opens his eyes again to the sound of another knock, followed by Wonwoo cracking open the door to his room. He’s carrying a bowl with something spicy in it, and Jeonghan’s mouth waters involuntarily.

“You can’t just waste away in here,” says Wonwoo, as he places the bowl down by Jeonghan’s mattress. He’s fidgeting with his sleeves, pulling them down over his knuckles. “You don’t have to come and eat with Nayoung and me, and I’m not going to ask what you’ve been running from.” Wonwoo tugs at one ear. “Just, I’ve been there too. We’ve all had our shit. And like, if you wanted a friend, I could…” he trails off.

Jeonghan chuckles. “Thanks. But you’re my boss. And also my landlord.”

Wonwoo sniffs. “I do edit the paper, but it’s technically a print collective. Minghao is the one who owns the whole building and the press, and really he just lets us live and set up shop here.” At Jeonghan’s look of surprise, he shrugs. “Family money.”

“Well,” says Wonwoo finally, when Jeonghan tries and fails to stifle a yawn, “think about it.” He backs out of the room and shuts the door behind him.

On top of his definitely illegal job at Wonwoo’s anti-imperialist paper, Jeonghan bums around downtown during his days off offering palm readings for a few coins a pop. He’s delighted to find that his charm works nearly as well in the big city as it did back home. Unsurprisingly, Jeonghan has the most luck with young women, which works out well enough for his wallet even though they’re often barking up the wrong tree.

He’s just finished dispensing love advice to one very anxious young lady when he turns around to find another potential client looking up at him. This one’s just a kid, with wide-set eyes and unevenly cut bangs. Jeonghan pats at the bench next to him and the kid sits down and offers both his hands, palms up. “I’m Chan,” he says. He’s practically beaming.

“Well, Chan, what do you want to know?”

Chan’s eyes are big and bright. “I want to know if I’m ready to go fight the Fire Nation.”

Jeonghan shouldn’t be surprised, really. But maybe Seungcheol’s leaving is still too fresh in his memory. Maybe it hasn’t really hit him until now that it’s not just Gwaseong, but the entire world now where children grow up too fast, eager to throw their bodies into the fray. Jeonghan drops his eyes. “You aren’t,” he says. “You shouldn’t go.”

“You didn’t even look at my hands,” says Chan accusingly.

Jeonghan looks down at him and offers up a charming smile. “Maybe I don’t have to.”

“You can’t even read palms, can you?” says Chan, now so indignant it’s absolutely cute. “I bet you’re out here just telling people what they want to hear. Or,” he thinks about it for a moment, “whatever you think they need to hear.”

“Congratulations,” says Jeonghan, shrugging. “You got me.”

He watches Chan for a moment longer. There’s still an air of huffiness surrounding him, but his eyes are serious now, downcast, far older than they should be. “You really think I shouldn’t go?”

Something in Jeonghan’s heart twists. All of a sudden, he feels the urge to protect this little idealist, to let him be a kid for just a bit longer. Delaying the inevitable, maybe. But Jeonghan is no stranger to that.

“Well, Chan,” he starts, and Chan looks up to him with those bright dark eyes. “I grew up in a refugee settlement not too far from here, called Gwaseong. And let me tell you about this boy I knew…”

-

Junhui is regaling the tavern with an account of the imugi he swears he saw at the docks the other day when Jeonghan feels the tap on his shoulder. He turns around to see a young woman standing behind him, her smiling eyes curved into familiar crescents. He narrows his eyes at her, trying to place her among all the faces he’s seen over the years.

“Jeonghan-oppa? There’s someone who wants to see you,” she says, and wordlessly Jeonghan follows her out past the door of the tavern, where someone is standing, someone broad-shouldered with his back to the door, hair tickling the nape of his neck.

The autumn wind blows a chill down his spine, and Jeonghan knows who it is before he even speaks. He barely registers Seungcheol’s voice itself as he thanks the girl. He only dimly recognizes Junghyun as she beams and slips back into the tavern.

Jeonghan can’t say a word. Just looks at Seungcheol as he turns around, and drinks in the face he never thought he would see again. Seungcheol’s hair is long now, tousled and sun-bleached, and it curls around his ears and over his brows. There’s a scar on his right cheek, a perfect little line, and Jeonghan aches to trace a finger over it. He clenches his fist. Seungcheol’s hands come up to rest on his shoulders, warm and solid as ever.

“Is it true, what you said earlier?” says Seungcheol, and there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “About that firebender boy you grew up with?”

Jeonghan looks into Seungcheol’s eyes, and he’s forgotten how intensely Seungcheol’s gaze narrows and focuses, as if he’s taking all the fire in his body and directing its brilliance at one place. Jeonghan feels naked before Seungcheol’s stare, spotlighted, a moth to a flame. It’s, just maybe, what he’s always dreamed of. Seungcheol’s eyes crease ever so slightly into worry.

“You’re drunk,” says Seungcheol, and his hands fall off Jeonghan’s shoulders. “It’s okay. Ah, we can –”

“Not that drunk,” says Jeonghan, reaching out and snagging Seungcheol’s hand, struggling to find his voice again. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

“I told you I’d come back though.”

“I didn’t believe you,” says Jeonghan, and he realizes he’s gripping Seungcheol’s hand hard, digging his nails into the flesh. Seungcheol glances down at their interlocked hands, and he simply lets him. Seungcheol has always let him hold on, he realizes, has never asked him to let go. “Of course I meant it. Mean it,” he says, more softly now.

“Why didn’t you say so when I told you I was leaving?”

“I was a coward,” shrugs Jeonghan. “I wished that I hadn’t told you all those stories about the war hero you would become, and then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten the idea in the first place.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” says Seungcheol. “You know you only told me what I wanted to hear.”

Jeonghan can only shake his head. But Seungcheol reaches his other hand up to Jeonghan’s chin, and his touch is so gentle that Jeonghan can’t help but lean into it. Seungcheol speaks again: “No one knows me like you do, you know? Inside and out. You set me free to do what you knew I needed to do.”

“Did you really meet him?” Jeonghan asks. “Avatar Aang, and all of them?”

“Yeah,” says Seungcheol, and there’s a fond smile on his face. “Aang and his whole crew, too. I was lucky. Zuko – Emperor Zuko now, huh – he personally taught me to firebend.” He stills. “It was the first time I didn’t feel ashamed about what I could do.”

Jeonghan swallows. He can see it all too clearly, Seungcheol rubbing arms with great bending masters and kings, emperors and Avatars. There’s a whole world out there for him, now that he’s a firebender and a war hero, for real now, no longer that eager boy from Gwaseong, no longer Jeonghan’s childhood best friend. His heart sinks. Seungcheol must be here to say goodbye, then. “Well,” and Jeonghan struggles to keep the tremor out of his voice, “it sounds like you had a real nice time out there.”

“Are you jealous?” asks Seungcheol, grinning. “Jeonghan, they’re kids.” His gaze softens. “They’re children, really, with the weight of the world on their shoulders. My place is here with you.”

“I thought that was a rumor,” says Jeonghan, trying hard to remember why he had thought they were so much older. Even Wonwoo’s sources, he supposes, can be fallible.

“No, like actual teenagers, and only just now. They remind us of you and me, years ago.” Seungcheol pauses. “I don’t regret it, but Jeonghan, you don’t even know how many nights I spent wishing you would have asked me to stay.”

“Well,” says Jeonghan, and an ironic laugh falls from his lips. “I guess I can’t do anything right.”

“No, don’t you see? Whatever you would have said, wherever you could have led me, I would have been happy, so long as it was with you. Hell. I’m happier than I’ve ever been before, seeing you again like this.”

Jeonghan realizes, then, that he’d had it all backwards. He’d thought himself a planet pulled into Seungcheol’s fiery orbit, but for Seungcheol it had always been Jeonghan leading the way: Jeonghan telling the war stories, Jeonghan to impress with his bending, Jeonghan telling him to leave and not stay. And Jeonghan, ultimately, who left Gwaseong without a trace, thinking Seungcheol would never come back to him. As always, Jeonghan's crime has been the crime of the faithless.

But here he is before him, Seungcheol in the flesh. Jeonghan doesn’t deserve him.

“I think you should think about this,” and there he goes, trying to keep his voice light again, because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if it cracks. “I’m not very easy to love. I’m selfish, and lazy, and –” He looks at his feet. “I only know how to eavesdrop, and lie, and run away, and not believe beautiful boys when they tell me they’ll come back for me.”

“You aren’t very easy to love at all,” agrees Seungcheol. “But,” and he shrugs, “I did it for twenty-two years. What’s the rest of my life?”

“Have you always been so corny?” groans Jeonghan, and Seungcheol only grins – that bright, gummy smile Jeonghan loves so much. The tips of Seungcheol’s ears are scarlet, and Jeonghan smirks. Maybe he can afford to push his luck a little. “I’ve been cold without you, all these years,” he says, nuzzling his head into Seungcheol’s shoulder, his first and most familiar pillow. “It sure would be nice if someone could warm me up just a little.”

Seungcheol snorts. “Are you asking for a demonstration of my big boy firebending? It’s not illegal anymore, but I don’t think we need to be making a scene this late at night.”

“I’m not asking you for anything,” Jeonghan mouths into his neck, and he swears he feels Seungcheol’s temperature rise. “I’m just making a statement.”

A pause.

“You’re just going to let me freeze, then. That’s fine.”

Seungcheol clicks his tongue and goes in for the kiss, and Jeonghan’s whole body floods with warmth. He’s so safe here, enclosed in Seungcheol’s arms. He loops his arms around Seungcheol’s neck. He’s real. The war is over, has been over for years, and Seungcheol is back, and this time his attention is on nothing and no one besides Jeonghan.

“You are just as insufferable as I remember,” says Seungcheol through his eyelashes, and Jeonghan can only laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hope u enjoyed my last-minute attempt at a contribution to the jeongcheol canon. here's seungcheol and junghyun [then and now](https://twitter.com/soonsvt/status/876433481399623680), too, in case you missed it :)
> 
> who wants the soonwoo spinoff featuring dogged anti-imperialist paper editor wonwoo and ex-fire nation hoshi (who deserted after a giant tiger spirit appeared in his dreams to convince him but, to be fair, he required very little convincing. he saw the tiger and he was a goner)


End file.
